@iBachue @badguydoubble @yjh29640319 The Roman Empire did have slaves throughout its whole duration - the slave market in Constantinople is a data source that medieval economic historians use to track prices over the centuries.
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Brian Conaway
1.1K posts
中宣部支持的大剧果然不同凡响
«太平年»的服装布景皆是上品，台词遣词也高古，造句也高雅，不像美国的影视剧，离不开脏话。
说过，中国以外几乎皆是蛮夷，放眼四海已经没有国家的语言里还有古代雅言了，唯独我华夏文脉未断也，华夏才是真正有过文明起源
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@rlprsn @benlandautaylor Ancient Chinese sources basically never describe battles themselves, but they regularly list who people had in their chariot crew when they went to battle and one person was always the spearman. So it sounds like at least some melee combat as well.
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@benlandautaylor Seems to be pretty well established that they were used for archery. They’re consistently depicted that way in ancient art. More stable than horseback, especially since stirrups weren’t invented yet.
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It's wild how we we know that chariots were THE dominant weapon in ancient warfare for many centuries but historians don’t agree on how you actually FOUGHT from a chariot, and there's no satisfying account of how it’s better than just riding a horse besides being rad as hell.
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@runclepennybags @rlprsn @benlandautaylor That's a documented use too, though it's by the Persians against Alexander, so it's centuries after regular horse-riding cavalry were also a thing. Sort of a gimmicky afterlife of the chariot.
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@rlprsn @benlandautaylor Hm, less thrilling that the image I had of them running people over and/or slicing them with blades mounted to the wheels.
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@Boxy_FT I know that in the 17th-18th c. there was production of texts in Mongolia portraying Genghis Khan in a positive Buddhist light as a chakravartin/incarnation of Vajrapani/etc. He's been the founder of the nation for centuries, and the way they pay respects has evolved over time.
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Genuine question - is this Genghis Khan worship an actual old tradition or is it a modern phenomenon now that he's considered cool, and the most notable Mongol in history?
Steppe Shaman@SteppeShaman
Mongols honoring a stone stele of Genghis Khan. The practice of honoring stone stelaes were practiced by all people on the steppe, including Mongols, Turks, Scythians, Jurchens, Khitans, and Proto-Sino-Tibetans.
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What is the best Persian state in history ?
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@calciogenio @canderaid "What, another century of the Arsacids is coming up? When are they going to get rid of those guys?"
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@canderaid Some of the shittiest Iranian dynasties in history lasted twice as long as America has lmao
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Isfahan Times Op-Ed Columnist: "Anglo-American civilization is almost indescribably ancient, dating to the times of King Æthelred of Mercia, while the Islamic Republic is younger than Jennifer Aniston"
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@Knightly_Hist 1660s is of course decades after the wars ended. Do we know how that source got its information on those fascinating yari tactics? (And what is the source?)
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On the topic of excellent portrayals of military tactics in Japanese animation.
There's a Shin Chan movie set in the Sengoku period.
The field battle opens with ashigaru exchanging fire from far away, under orders, they rush into a more effective range under the cover of stationary shields made with bamboo.
One side get's the better of the exchange, using guns, bows and slings which pushes the enemy's shot out of position.
This in turns allows the pikemen to advance unopposed, and a push of pike ensues. The way the pikes interact with each other is based on a primary source written in the 1660s. It is in no way indicative of the average pike to pike encounter, but it is a valid tactic.
And it all ends with the losing army breaking into a flight, instead of fighting to the last man.
It's great to see mostly accurate gear (if a bit too standardized) accurate weapons, officers leading the fight and guns, ofc.
This is a child's movie. An ok story, but has memorable battle scenes. Putting effort into these aspects of a movie never goes to waste.
Shoutout to @gunsen_history for fact checking the story behind the Push of pike, make sure to follow his page if you're interested in Japanese History🇯🇵
The Late Knight Show@Knightly_Hist
The first actual battle sequence has amazing attention to detail in less than a minute: We get soldiers fighting on a line. At some point, the more experienced and well armed men breach the enemy lines. I like seeing a helmet dent under a fairly long hammer, but that it takes multiple blows to beat the guy senseless. Some close quarters action with comptent shoulderlocks and offensive use of a buckler. The infantry takes down stakes that the English have placed to block cavalry, and the latter approach slowly, by walking their horses.
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Shoku Nihongi chronicle, or at least had access to other versions of the anecdote when writing, and he chose to retain some elements while altering others when crafting his story. I really love coming across wide-ranging connections across centuries like this in historical texts!
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the story depicting a spring of sake. And the story says that the man was awarded with the governorship of Mino, while the history records just that the existing governor was given a promotion in rank. The 13th century author must have consulted the centuries-old 3/n
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There's a story in the 13th century Japanese story collection Kokon Chomonjū that refers to a man finding a miraculous spring in a specific month in the 8th century. Thanks to Ross Bender's recent translation of the Shoku Nihongi, I could look up the official National History 1/n
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@oh_that_hat @eonsys Setting aside whether the claims are overstated, this approach to AI would get closer to simulating human thinking, but you'd also lose the qualities people want AI to have. Instead of a tireless program always ready to serve, you'd have a agents that want to do their own thing.
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There's a fruit fly walking around right now that was never born.
@eonsys just released a video where they took a real fly's connectome — the wiring diagram of its brain — and simulated it. Dropped it into a virtual body. It started walking. Grooming. Feeding. Doing what flies do.
Nobody taught it to walk. No training data, no gradient descent toward fly-like behavior. This is the opposite of how AI works. They rebuilt the mind from the inside, neuron by neuron, and behavior just... emerged. It's the first time a biological organism has been recreated not by modeling what it does, but by modeling what it is.
A human brain is 6 OOM more neurons. That's a scaling problem, something we've gotten very good at solving. So what happens when we have a working copy of the human mind?
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@sighyam I read somewhere that it was initially conceived as an East Asian story and then they decided to make it SEA and subbed in regional aesthetics without changing the story. IMO they should've used a Southeast Asian tale as their starting point (Panji tales? Khun Chang Khun Phaen?)
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@Scholars_Stage I was hoping to tackle translating one as a capstone years down the line from now. I don't mind so much having machine translations available as a stopgap, but I also hope this doesn't dissuade people from studying texts deeply and making critical edition translations.
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Brian Conaway retweetledi
[Japanese manga writer trying to write Americans]
“The CEOs would perhaps…..compete over who could take the manliest bite of the burger? No, that’s ridiculous, surely America cannot be like that.”
Pop Crave@PopCrave
Burger King CEO takes a big bite of a Whopper in new video after McDonald’s CEO went viral for reluctantly nibbling the chain’s new Big Arch Burger.
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